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Brad Keselowski wins pole at NASCAR’s Southern 500

Team Penske driver hopes his third front-row start of the season will be a springboard heading into the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Brad Keselowski is congratulated by crew members after winning the pole for Sunday's NASCAR race at Darlington Raceway. (Terry Renna / The Associated Press)

By Jenna FryerThe Associated Press

Sat., Sept. 5, 2015

DARLINGTON, S.C.—Brad Keselowski won the pole for Sunday’s race at Darlington Raceway, where he’ll start up front for the first time all season while searching for his first Southern 500 victory.

Keselowski turned a lap at 178.874 m.p.h. Saturday to earn his first pole of the season. The Team Penske driver put his Ford in the top starting spot five times last year, but this marks just his third front-row starting spot of 2015.

“It’s probably the biggest pole I’ve ever had, as far as what the track means,” said Keselowski. “I’ve always thought of Darlington as one of the elite tracks.”

Keselowski, who has two top-10s at Darlington but none since 2011, is hoping to use the Southern 500 as a springboard into the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. It’s the penultimate race of the regular season and Keselowski wants to reclaim some of the momentum he had last year when he rolled into the Chase as the top seed.

“We haven’t had, to date, as strong of a year as we had last year and that wears on (the team),” he said. “I’m just really pleased with today’s qualifying result and the momentum we’re carrying.”

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But he wasn’t about to get too comfortable prior to the prestigious Sunday night race on one of the most challenging tracks on the NASCAR circuit.

With its quirky layout — the 1.366-mile layout is shaped like an egg instead of a symmetrical oval — puts most cars against the wall and struggling to avoid smacking it.

The track already has claimed its share of victims this weekend: Kyle Busch hit the wall in Friday practice and went to a backup, Danica Patrick’s team was pulling out a backup after she hit the wall in qualifying and Greg Biffle’s crew was fixing damage from Saturday.

“This track is so challenging as a race car driver, you make one mistake and you can take a fast race car and make it a ball of wrecked metal,” Keselowski said.

Patrick’s brush with the wall during qualifying created tension within her race team. She was seen in an animated discussion with crew chief Daniel Knost after her third run and Stewart-Haas Racing competition director Greg Zipadelli said it was over her being sent out for that final run.

“She felt like she wasn’t going to go faster,” Zipadelli said. “The team and the crew chief, they don’t give up and they wanted to try it and it bit ’em.”

She qualified 30th, but will have to drop to the back of the field at the start at a track where she can be lapped quickly.

“It’s definitely not the position we wanted to be in,” she said. “But it’s a long race, so we’ll just try our best to gain track position every chance we get.”

Kurt Busch qualified second in a Chevrolet for Stewart-Haas Racing, followed by teammate Kevin Harvick. Busch has qualified on the front row five times this year.

Keselowski teammate Joey Logano was fourth and Jeff Gordon, making his final start in the Southern 500, will start fifth. Logano has not had the same struggles as Keselowski this year: He’s started on the front row nine times and has three wins to Keselowski’s one.

“We were in the ballpark,” Logano said of his qualifying run. “I think all the Team Penske cars were pretty fast. Brad obviously laid down a good one there at the end. He never slowed down ever and everyone else was slowing down each lap. It was interesting to see that. We were just a little free all of qualifying there. We just never jumped the fence with it.”

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